RICK HOLMES: A standoff over Mass. transportation

The dance has begun. Patrick is talking tough, vowing to veto the leadership plan if it reaches his desk. By teaming up behind one proposal, DeLeo and Murray have taken away some of the governor’s room to maneuver. Legislators have begun to sweat.

This is how Deval Patrick does it: The governor talks about a big issue for years, quietly explaining that it’s got to be fixed and it will cost serious money. He takes it on the road, talking to newspaper editorial boards, chambers of commerce or anyone who’ll listen. He proposes something more ambitious than Beacon Hill expected.

Then the dance with the Legislature’s Democratic leaders begins.

The issue this time is the state’s under-funded, under-maintained and inadequate transportation system. The roads, bridges and trains are in disrepair. The state’s huge public transit system, the MBTA, has required repeated bailouts, and its smaller ones are starved for cash. The reorganized MassDOT has to use borrowed money to pay salaries, one of the great sins of its predecessors.

Patrick talks about it in terms of jobs. Massachusetts needs jobs, especially in parts of the state that are hard to get to. In its “Best States for Business” list, CNBC ranked Massachusetts 45th out of 50 on infrastructure and transportation. Government must invest in transportation, Patrick says, so companies will invest in Bay State jobs.

Patrick is thinking big: He wants $1 billion a year in new revenue for transportation and $900 million for education, where another set of problems require new state investment. He wants to do it in a way that makes the state’s tax system more progressive, by raising the income tax and cutting the sales tax. And he wants regional equity, as opposed to the traditional practice of taxing everyone in the state to fix up Boston.

This is how the Democrats who run the state Legislature do it: They talk among themselves, behind locked doors. Usually the Democrats meet in closed caucus in the State House. Last month, House Speaker Robert DeLeo had his members join him for a closed confab down the hill at the Parker House hotel, where they discussed Patrick’s plan with the Democrats’ political action committee.

When DeLeo and his counterpart, Senate President Therese Murray, have a plan, they don’t like to waste time debating it. They announced a modest initiative on Tuesday, and the House Ways and Means Committee endorsed it the next day. The Patrick administration and House Republicans pleaded for a public hearing on the proposal, but DeLeo refused. He briefed House Democrats – behind closed doors, of course – on Thursday and plans to vote it through on Monday.

Calling the leadership’s plan modest is far too positive. It raises gas taxes three cents a gallon, raises cigarette taxes a buck a pack and hikes a few business taxes to raise $500 million for transportation. That’s basically enough to straighten out MassDOT’s operating budget and bail out the T, and not much more.

People are still sorting through the details – you think a public hearing might help people understand such a complicated proposal? – but Patrick and transportation advocates are already calling it a “fiscal shell game.” Much of the new revenue may not even go to transportation. The plan requires MassDOT and the MBTA to find $270 million on their own, through savings or revenues, which means higher fares, higher Registry fees and/or higher tolls just down the road.

Page 2 of 3 - The plan also doesn’t raise enough money to build anything new, though there’s the promise that getting the salaries back in the operating budget will free up borrowing capacity for new projects at some point. But the leadership plan mostly patches holes in the roads and the transportation budget.

And that low ranking on the CNBC list? “We’re going to continue to drop in that ranking under this plan,” said Kristina Egan, director of Transportation for Massachusetts.

As for making the tax system more fair for low-income residents, forget about it. A nicotine addiction tax, which is what it really is, and higher gas taxes will hit hardest those who can least afford it.

As for education, it looks like DeLeo and Murray are throwing it under the rusty old bus.

Observers say the plan could go to the Senate for a vote as soon as Thursday. Complicating things further, the House Ways and Means Committee is do to release its budget Wednesday. Transportation isn’t everyone’s top priority, and you can bet there will be tradeoffs on the table as two huge pieces of legislation take shape.

So the dance has begun. Patrick is talking tough, vowing to veto the leadership plan if it reaches his desk. By teaming up behind one proposal, DeLeo and Murray have taken away some of the governor’s room to maneuver.

Those who rarely pay attention to the set pieces that pass for debate in the Massachusetts Great and General Court may want to tune in Monday. There will be amendments – MetroWest legislators are pushing one that would freeze Pike tolls unless and until tolls are extended to other highways – and there will be intense lobbying. House Democrats will be forced to choose between their governor and their speaker.

Close votes on Beacon Hill are rare. Watch Monday for the difference between a simple majority for the DeLeo/Murray plan and a two-thirds majority, which would be enough to override Patrick’s veto. If Patrick can keep the vote under two-thirds, hard bargaining will begin.

Patrick has been here before. Early on, the Legislature’s leaders managed to roll him. Other times, the branches have differed at the outset but eventually found common ground. In 2010, push came to shove over a casino bill, Patrick called the leaders’ bluff, and all went away empty-handed.

This is how your state representatives and state senators do it: On matters of ideology and principle, they will vote their consciences and express the sentiments of their constituents. On nuts and bolts issues, they check the prevailing political winds and find a way to follow their leaders. When their legislative leaders and their governor disagree, and when interest groups are watching their actions closely, they sweat.

Page 3 of 3 - This week, they will be sweating.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor for the MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, blogs at Holmes & Co. (http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/holmesandco). He can be reached at rholmes@wickedlocal.com.